Macrobiotic Life

I am creating and testing a new theory in my life, in the past days/weeks.
The theory about psychic eliminations.

The point is – there’s no reason to differentiate psychic eliminations from bodily ones.
Let me explain.

When you understand the logic about the physical eliminations, about illnesses, you know they are not a bad things.
Actually, all eliminations and illnesses are great and you should let them happen, not to suppress them.
Even, you should boost them up with some kind of natural remedy.
You suffer for a while, having a fever, head-ache, skin problems, but you know the only way how to treat it, is to go to the cause, not only suppressing the symptoms.
This logic is well known to the macrobiotic world and other “natural methods” practitioners.

I think we should go one step farther with this logic.
And start to realize how our mental/emotional body is using the very same principles.
But the elimination processes are not of the physical dimension of course.
They are the types of fear, stress, anxiety, nervousness, phobia, feeling of lack, envy, hate, self-doubt etc.

When all bodily eliminations are gone, the natural state of our physical body is a good physical health.
And the same logic applies to the emotional/mental health.
The natural state of our mental body manifests as easiness, love, courage, compassion, open-mindedness, curiousity, abundance, adaptability, creativeness, adventurousness, less thinking about oneself, more thinking about Oneness.
These qualities are not something we have to strive for, to fight for, to invest a lot of personal energy to achieve.
They are our natural state of being.

This is very important to understand.
From this logic, come up simple conclusions:

Apply the same elimination thinking to your mental processes.
Let them flow, let them be, don’t suppress them, don’t judge them, don’t try to get around them, acknowledge them.
And to eliminate quickly, even try to celebrate them, love them.
Nurture them – in a sense of paying full attention for a while to them, observe them, but remember – without judging – they are as they are.
As you see, it’s a very similar level of thinking as I have described about the physical eliminations.
See the similarity on a energetic level and it will make perfect sense to you.

The problem of society is obvious – we are suppressing our unwanted emotions, clinging to one side of the coin and creating a lot of havoc in our mental sphere.
It’s all unnecessary, if we understand this simple elimination logic.

But, there are always tricky parts, otherwise all people would be healthy and using these natural methods.

One of the traps is this:
The mental body is much more flexible than the physical one.
It reacts much quicker, all happens very fast in the comparison to the physical world.
What’s the conclusion of this?
Again, very simple.
You are a being influenced by different energetic inputs and they can manifest at your mental sphere very fast.
You can get away of fear for a half day, to experience it again at the other half.
You can have mental eliminations each morning, each day and it may seem like there’s no progress.

And on top of that – the healthier you are, the faster the mental reactions/eliminations do happen.
The same applies to the physical body – here’s an example:
The better your physical health, the faster you get eliminations when you (for example) eat something from the extreme part of energies (white sugar, lot of fats, milk – using the macrobiotic logic here).
Yes, it is a paradox, but illnesses/eliminations are a good sign of your healthy physical body.
The body is eliminating excesses, to maintain perfect health – and an effective, healthy body does it in a fast way.

The same things happen to your mental body, but it happens much faster.
The eliminations come much faster, which can be seen as a bad thing, but they can be released also much faster, if we let them go.
You can eat something of the extreme foods, and you can in a matter of minutes start to have weird mental thoughts – food energy manifestation is really happening fastest in the mental/psychical world – the more attention you pay to it, the more obvious it becomes to you.
Now, you can start to obsess with your weird thoughts, not understanding them, feeling bad for them, suppressing them, like many people do, even the macrobiotic people and not seeing any connection to the food you have eaten.
But it all testifies how unknowledgeable we are – what a misunderstandment.

Start to treat your mental eliminations with this theory and all becomes much easier.
Believe, that when you let them happen, let them eliminate, your mental body will start to clean from a years of debris.
It can start to become quite hard, because all the suppressed emotions are stored there.
But don’t run away from them.

Learn how to meditate, because in meditation you take this mental healing to perfection.
There’s no better way for mental cleaning, than meditations.
Sit, meditate, observe your emotions, don’t judge.
See the meditation process a perfect cleaning exercise – don’t expect anything, don’t think about nirvana or other complicated subjects or state of beings/consciousness, that should be achieved by it.
Just simply sit and do the meditation regularly to clean your mental body.
And it will happen!

The problem is, many people are thinking the meditations and spiritual practices in general should lead to happy, loving, joyous mental states.
And when the fears, anxiety starts to emerge in their life, after they start these spiritual practices, they are afraid, they didn’t expect them, it’s something completely else they wanted, hence they stop to practice and evaluate this spiritual practice as wrong.
They still search for the perfect spiritual path, that will give them the happiness and of course – if you search, you will find.
They will find their “all is perfect” practice.
But what’s the price?
Very big if you ask me – the price of total blindness, artificial reality, matrix dream world.
They succumb to their distorted view of reality, they need to suppress a lot of things in their psyche, they have to invest a lot of energy daily to hold their distorted world and they are becoming slaves of their own Mind world.
It’s all becoming on this subtle energetic level, and it can be understood very easily when you read and listen the right people carefully.

For me, it was a big trap of my spiritual searching. I have fallen to this “all is perfect” dream, I suppressed, I shun from my negative emotions.
But this period was needed to realize how wrong I am.
Maybe there’s no other way to understand things than to make all the mistakes for yourself.
You can read and hear from thousands people, but you never learn, other than from your own experience.
I am 99% sure that this ‘learning only through your own experience’ process is true.

But still, there’s a very important logic in listening and reading all the advices of other people.
Because you can become aware of them, you notice them, get acquainted about how things could work, what are the possibilities.
And when you fall in all the traps, you can bring out the right solution from your magical hat of knowledge.
Maybe it’s still possible to see the solution even without reading anything, without listening anyone – maybe.
But many people are better with having these backup knowledge at their hand – you don’t need to think up the plow if others already done it.

So, if you have fallen already in the trap, or if it waits for you still – it doesn’t matter, take notice of my simple logic here and use it now or later in your life.

Actually, the more I work with this simple thinking, the more evident it is to me and the less I understand how it could happen, that something this basic is not described in a more friendly and logical way.
Of course, it can be the problem of me, that I haven’t read/listened to the right people.
I am not sure if I have created another complicated description of this topic, but I feel like my explanation brings something new, some new insight, especially for the macrobiotic people and for the people seeing logic in the “all is energy” world.
As usually, it brings a new insight to me at least – the writer gets the biggest results, not the reader

One last thing – this logic is a perfect example of how we are still not seeing similarities in everything around us.
We are treating physical and mental world like completely different realities, with different set of rules, laws.
Maybe, from the west-science point of view, it could be true, that different rules apply for them.
But this is the perfect time to appreciate the logic of yin/yang.
Yin/yang will educate you and give you a perfect system for working with the whole reality – no matter if physical or mental, energy or matter.
They are all the same – once you understand the Principle of something, you can very creatively apply the same logic in a very different part of the Universe.

So, to sum it up: mental eliminations are using the same logic as the physical ones.
Let all the eliminations flow out of you freely.

Love you!

This discussion was started by Phiya’s Facebook message. I would like to reprint it here, for other people to benefit.

Phiya >> Macrobiotics must necessarily address addictions, be they from more serious substances such as drugs and alcohol, or from foods such as sugar, ice cream, chocolate, fried foods, junk foods, baked foods and processed foods. It isn’t enough to stop the addiction itself but to also address the addictive patterns of thinking and behaving as well…

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Me >> Macrobiotic should provide more theories about all energies beside the food. Macrobiotic is very good in setting the exact food pattern, standard plate – people like precise rules. I think, there should be similar precise pattern for the rest of the life energies/activities. People are not aware of this.. that they should balance all their …

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John >> Interesting point, Frantisek, although wouldn’t there be a danger that so much precision and control over everything would kind of squash out all the freedom and joy of living? Just a thought…

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Me >> John: I think there are two sides as usually. Some people would become too rigid (yang) because of this, some people would be helped to become less unresponsible (yin). For me, I try to look at mental body the same as physical. I think the exactly same question can be put over the food plate. Doesn’t it cause too much control? From what I see and people I know, there are many rational/logical thinkers in the macrobiotic movement. I think, one of the reasons for this is – the precision with which the macrobiotic sets all the food rules (the whole logical taoism yin/yang logic). I can imagine the same style of rules for the spiritual/mental/emotional life. They don’t need to be perfectly precise.. the importance would be put on the overall harmony/balance logic. There would be suggested ‘plate’ models with the basic theory around – that everyone is different, unique and has to find his way. I am just suggesting more discussion about the spiritual/mental part in the macrobiotic. I know top M leaders are aware of this very well and they try to address this issue. For example in the latest edition of Cancer Prevention Diet – there’s whole new part about Emotions related to Cancer development.

I am getting inspired by Integral Life Practices last days – I like how they try to make balance from different world practices – http://www.kenwilber.com/personal/ILP/MyILP.html

I am just speaking from my daily macrobiotic practice, from my life experiences with M and from many M people I know around. I see where they make mistakes, where I have made mistakes.. and this issue is one of them – on of the biggest mistakes I made – I just simply didn’t balance all my parts of life, I have concentrated too much on food

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John >> Excellent insights, Frantisek…I am often in conversation with students and friends here in Scandinavia who repeatedly bring up the issue: “if MB food is meant to be local, how come it all comes from Japan?”

I have very well thought-out and articulated answers to such questions, of course, but what if one applied the same criteria to “spiritual food?”

Many of the arguments that one can make about solid food do not make sense when applied to spiritual food.

I have personally derived ENORMOUS benefit from Far Eastern spiritual practices, but I find it much easier to explain to a Finn why he should eat miso soup every day than why he should chant the Diamond Sutra every day…

Perhaps we should continue this very interesting conversation somewhere other than Phiya’s FB wall: he probably wants to put the cat out and get some sleep : )

BTW, how can you possibly have such excellent English?

best wishes,

John.

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Me >> I think we can continue chatting here, Phiya can just ignore and others can see it and join, if they want.

Excellent English? Thank you, but I don’t think so. The same question could be send to you also, right? Or at Finn, it’s usual to talk English there? For me, I am self-employed from 99, I make money from net, I get info from english websites, so I consider myself as very poor learner.. for so many years of reading in English, I am not good at all But writing, talking and reading is very different, you know. For writing, the best practice become from my blog writing http://www.macrobiotic.name

About the local macrobiotic issue. I was dealing with the same question myself and from people around, asking me why so many Asia groceries. I have found general macrobiotic answers for this – the logic of the same climatic zone and also the logic of “the more water food has, the closer to you it has to be”. It served me well. But finally, I am questioning the same thing again. Looking from different perspective and now the perspective could be described as “simplicity” and “self-sustainability”. From this point of view, I am for localizing macrobiotic to each country/environment. I am asking myself, what if there will be world crisis, what if I want to live deep in the nature. I am sure, I can live from the local production, without miso, kuzu, umeboshi, seaweeds. I think they can be exchanged with other fermented foods or that I can learn how to prepare them similarly. In the end, the fermented foods were in each country’s history, we just have to rediscover and also learn about wild plants/weeds. They are my seaweed replacement
Maybe the little problem is with rice. I like rice very much. But I am going to learn about no-water rice cultivations (if I say it right, they just don’t need so much water and warm/wet weather).

For the spiritual practices. I think we are in the quest of rediscovering our old roots too. At least I am. Pagan, druid religions were the basis of nearly all religions (if you look closely and open your mind). Sacral geometry is hidden everywhere. It’s all about energies, the spiritual practices differ just like the different exercises for the body. But I have no problem with doing aikido in the Czech, or meditating vipassana style, because I see it all as having exact energy on me (more yin, more yang). Meditations and exercise are in christianity, just under different names

John, so you are Finn macrobiotic lecturer?

Thanks for the conversation, awesome topic

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Patrick >> i enjoyed this exchange, it is clever;just suggesting that everyone that is interested in this kind of mind excercise could go and simply rediscover the diet of their peaceful ancestors, some times very difficult to do find (peaceful)
michio’s work is tremendous!!
we all could turn into what i call lattitude”izing” MB,and trust me there is lots of work to be done in it’s longitude”izing” as well; to be continued if you so desire??? love peace, namaste

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Me >> Patrick: I am not sure what you are talking about. I surely desire for continuation
And I agree, Michio’s work is colossal!!

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Patrick >> frantisek, in simple terms i’m talking about about the true regionalisation of MB latitude and longitude wise, michio only touched base with that! and also i have to remember that this way of life is base on the motto of ” one peaceful world”
therefore my question about following the diet of peaceful ancestors ( pre traveling foods) is i think a crucial one

i have in storage in mass a tremendous book of about 500 pages written by a polish man ( don’t remember his name now) about fermented food complete history and geography

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Me >> Patrick: thanks for the explanation, somehow your English is a little hard for me (I don’t consider it as your problem).
You remembered me about the “Ferment & Human Nutrition” excelent book from the Bill Mollison (father of Permaculture movement), maybe this is the one you mean, but he is not polish I think

Check the reviews.. really great book!

For a better entertainment: I suggest you click the play button at the above video and start reading, the music of the video is important

Don’t underestimate the simplicity of life!

People make things unbearably complicated.
In the ‘making things complicated’ they already manifest their mental illness, their deviation from the Natural principle – which is Simplicity.

We are born Strong, we are born Love, we are born Responsible to our real Self! All child are being born with these characteristics.

We just regrettably pay the price of Freedom.
Because freedom does mean, you are free to choose to be slave and to make slaves from others.
Yes, this is the real price of the real freedom. If you would be born in Greece, in Athens or Sparta, long time ago, they would keep you strong, responsible and brave for the whole lifetime. You would have no other choice, hence no freedom.

Realize your freedom, realize you choose to be weak, to be ill, to follow other’s commands instead of your own. To follow the material possessions instead of finding enormous joy in the non-attachment. All was done upon you, but you have all accepted, nobody hold a shotgun on your head, forcing you to accept all the rules of the dementic society.

Now, when you realize this, the next step is to return to the Source. Realize the intrinsic simplicity of the whole Universe.

If you are born strong, you can become strong again. The steps are very simple and this is the problem for many people. They can’t belief something so simple can be true. We have been learned to belief in complicated theories – left brain thinking.
Delete this self-destroying program from your mind, hack inside and erase it completely and start observing the simple laws of Nature everywhere.

Ok, enough of my philosophical (yin) introduction, now you’ll get the practical (yang) part – the Rules of the Battlefield.

Do all these things daily/weekly. Get them in harmony, balance them wisely. Which means – don’t stop doing any of the rules and also don’t start doing any rule too fanatically, too much. The exact balancing is upon you, upon your experiences, observations. We are all different. Find your way by constant practice.

That’s it, that’s all. Very probably I will update and change this list in the future. But the point is, to inspire you to start looking at life from the simple logic. To start being responsible for all that’s happening to you – to the deepest of your emotions and feelings. Your weakness, your fears, your depressions, melancholy, anxiety, aggressiveness – they are all very logical result of the life you live now. You have to experience them, because you live how you live, you do what you do. But by changing your daily habits, you change these core emotions and all your beliefs also!

This is a big Truth, that is available for you to discover daily. Try to be balanced in all the daily activities and you will get happy mind and life. Because the balance is another name for happiness and health.

For the balancing sake, here is one interesting view on the matter of Illuminati agenda.
It’s always good to think about all possible sides of the conflict/reality.

It seems that it’s all relative, depends from what point you look at it. In the end, it’s the duality game and you have the power to stop the right/wrong judging in your head. Hmm, but how to behave then? Is Love some outside force of these dualities, that is “good” to hold on? Some primordial non-duality force, coming from Absolute? Or maybe the Love is the Absolute itself, just a different name? Or can the Love be put on the yin/yang scale? And why to choose Love, if there is no right/wrong?

Maybe Castaneda has a very good answers:

“Look at every path closely and deliberately, then ask ourselves this crucial question: Does this path have a heart? If it does, then the path is good. If it doesn’t, it is of no use.”

““Only as a warrior can one withstand the path of knowledge. A warrior cannot complain or regret anything. His life is an endless challenge, and challenges cannot possibly be good or bad. Challenges are simply challenges.””

Anyway, back to my initial idea, to post you this comment about Illuminati agenda:

Did it ever occur to you that *they* don’t want to harm you at all – that they want you to be free and you refuse to be free, so they are spurring you on as harshly as you need??

Think about it: You didn’t even think of throwing off the yoke of slavery until your water supply was poisoned, your skies were chemtrailed, your children were forcibly taken from you and trafficked, you were threatened being taken to concentration camps and either with being made into a chipped zombie or with death by the most horrific means.

Are you? quite sure “they” are the bad guys?

If a man has been saved once by Oriental medicine, he has no possibility of falling ill again in his lifetime. Otherwise, he has not been truly cured, or he has not grasped the essence of the medical practice. If he becomes ill several times again, he is not worth curing, he must be allowed to suffer that he might learn the law. That is only way to bring him to true salvation and to consolidate the happiness of all of humanity.

One must concentrate the physical constitution, the ground, the inner environment so soundly that the factors of disease cannot penetrate into it or are no longer active in it. This is the perfect physiological synthesis which all the animals and all the birds possess, instinctively. Let us not confuse this with preventive medicine, which is but another analytical science. The perfect medicine, the Ido, is the medical application of all the In’Yological (yin/yang) understanding of the entire universe.

Le Principe Unique de la Philosophie
et de la Science d’Extreme-Orient
by Georges Ohsawa

It has been three days since I started watching these totaly awesome videos!
And it changed my last days completely.
Opened me eyes – really big.
Gave me a LOT of informations to think about.
Kicked me right in the butt and made me deeply think – to rethink many of my old beliefs.
I like when this happens to me.
The more you know, the harder it is to be influenced in this way.
To have this brilliant feeling of “aha” moment.
To find a new belief model, idea that you can implement into your old beliefs.
But the biggest experience is waiting at the doors of “no belief systems at all”.
The doors of “throw all belief systems away”.
The real religion begins right at the next doors, that are very very close and their title is “throw away your religions too”.
Belief nothing, because belief is the mind concept.
You are not your mind.
You are much bigger.
All is just an illusion.
Matrix is everywhere, Neo

Am I on a drug? Am I totaly manipulated by the dark side? Hehe.
What I am talking about?

This is IT – David Icke – Melbourne 2009 – 46 videos – 8 hours of pure enlightening informations!

I have seen Zeitgeist, I have seen Esoteric Agenda, I have seen many movies and videos over the internet.
But this huge video set is much more important for me.

It’s no about believing it all. It’s not about watching without thinking.
Watch it, ponder on it, experiment with it and get inspired with it to some action.
Any action is better than no action! If you are not taoist monk, who leaves all work to Nature

I am joking with this post a little.
I am really into this stuff now.
Because I am after 3 days of watching this whole set.
But it has a huge impact on me, on my thinking.
It helps me to connect a lot of life puzzle again.
And David is a good dualistic thinker, I have found many informations for my yin/yang thinking – they are everywhere and if you think in yin/yang terms, it can simplify and help you understand a lot of theories much deeper.

Jin

Macrobiotic Personal Chef
Whole Life Coach
Macrobiotic Diet/Nutiritional Counselor

Jin has a very interesting blog – simple english, right to the point, short sentences, beautiful pictures and a lot of wisdom full of macrobiotic (yin/yang) thinking. I am definitely adding his blog to my rss reader. He posts many great tips that you can involve in your macrobiotic practice – or that you already know, but you can quickly recall

He has also his own website, full of macrobiotic articles and tips!

http://www.wholelifewithjin.com/index.html
http://www.wholelifewithjin.com/healthtips.html
http://www.wholelifewithjin.com/brownriceandcancer.html

And you can watch Jin at these videos – I like the slim but firm body – this is what macrobiotic can do for you

Ken connects yin/yang perfectly for me. He is great Taoist thinker. It will enhance your knowledge about the (non)dualistic world how the macrobiotic also perceives it.

Ken Wilber is the most widely translated academic writer in America, with 25 books translated into some 30 foreign languages, and is the first philosopher-psychologist to have his Collected Works published while still alive. Wilber is an internationally acknowledged leader and the preeminent scholar of the Integral stage of human development, which continues to gather momentum around the world. His many books, all of which are still in print, can be found at Amazon.com. Some of his more popular books include Integral Spirituality; No Boundary; Grace and Grit; Sex, Ecology, Spirituality; and the “everything” books: A Brief History of Everything (one of his largest selling books) and A Theory of Everything (probably the shortest introduction to his work). Ken Wilber is the founder of Integral Institute, Inc., the co-founder of Integral Life, Inc., and the Senior Fellow of Integral Life Spiritual Center.

Read many of his awesome articles here (if they have FREE icon, you can read them without subscribing).
Check out his personal website too.

And I would suggest, to get better know his style, start reading this article – Always Already: The Brilliant Clarity of Ever-Present Awareness.

On another topic, if you have serious illness (cancer), we you are faced with death (and who isn’t), definitely check out this book of him!! It’s completely life changing book and it will leave you fearless and accepting all the life can offer, even the death.

Many interviews with Ken and his deep knowledge at Shambala.com.

“How to be healthy and happy? By understanding what life in this universe is all about. How to understand this complex universe? By reducing everything into yin and yang. Doing so gives us a framework, a point of reference. This can be extremely useful. And fascinating.” ~ George Ohsawa

You can play this funny game a few minutes each day. Try to reduce all the phenomena around you and give them the yin/yang stamps. Then you can simply apply all the rules of the Universe upon them. It’s very interesting game and enormously practical activity. The whole I-Ching book is written around this topic. When to act, when to rest. When to add, when to take. In this context you shouldn’t see any problems in your life, only opportunities, lessons to learn. Because when we are down, we must automatically go up very soon. And by being down, we learn a lot. Accept this duality game and stop worrying about anything. Because you worry about the basic logic of the Universe, which can’t be changed, only understood, accepted and enjoyed. Our worries come from the ignorance of this principle. And this ignorance stems from our shifting away from the harmony. Mostly, this shift has the biggest origin in the daily food we eat.

Nothing is good or bad. All is relative and the choice is yours. Decide consciously. What do I want to take from this situation? What can you learn from this?

Why should you worry with such mind then?

Second old article written by me at 6th January 2008.

Today I am interested to write about macrobiotic topic.
This is one of my big interests. Maybe the biggest one.
Once you realise that everything in life is somehow connected, you can’t depart from your life the influence of the food you eat daily.
Everything is energy and you should treat everything in this world like this.
If you are working in this mind picture you are seing the world quite differently.
The food you eat is transformed to the pure energy.
The macrobiotic is talking about main two energies.
The macrobiotic is derived from the Taoism and its view on the life.
Sweet, sugar is yin energy. It’s one side of the coin, one extreme.
The other side is salt, yang energy.
If you are eating overly salty and sugary foods you are flying between these two extremes and it’s very hard to stop, to balance.
If you want to be very balanced you have to work with the middle spectrum of energies. Not too much yin or yang.
These energies do containt all the main macrobiotic foods and they are:
whole cereals (rice, oat, wheat, barley..)
vegetables (except tomato)
seaweeds
condiments like shoyu, tamari, miso
fruits (but only from your local teritory)
oats

If you eat these balanced foods and if you use balanced cooking styles you are eating slowly, chewing right, the result is very healthy body, balanced mind and your life completely is getting better.
I know it sounds too scifi to believe that such a simple thing like food can be so powerful.
The best thing is to try it yourself and decide later.
I like Steve Pavlina’s 30 day challenge.
You will pick something you want to try and do it for 30 days, without any pause. You have to be strong and stick with it for 30 days. Then you will decide.
Btw Pavlina is starting his raw food eating experiment now.

The 5 Elements Theory began shortly after the Yin/Yang Theory was developed and is a separate system used by a limited number of practitioners of TCM who for the most part utilize the yin/yang system from a more mystical perspective rather than the physical perspective that macrobiotics follow. Initially the 5 Elements began as a physical system of understanding nature but later its meaning was changed and then attempts were made to correlate the 5 Elements with the 8 trigrams of the much earlier I Ching (Book of Changes) — of course, an impossibility.

The theory of the 5 Elements is a fixed system of “forced fits” and utilizes a discriminating system of correlative schema that are ethno-centric to ancient China and not applicable globally. Numerous flaws have been found by scores of Chinese philosophers, cosmologists, sages, (including Lao Tzu, Wang Chung, and Shao Yung) and its complexity is contrary to the Philosophical Taoists view of simplicity (although the Religious Taoists embrace it).

The 5 Elements have nothing in common with the Magic Square of 9 which again is a corruption of the well system that was designed by an an acnient agricultural engineer to divert flood water from the Yellow River. Modern macrobiotics, including George Ohsawa and Herman Aihara tried to steer clear from this contrived system and to simplify macrobiotic understanding so that it could be utilized by all people, but during the mid-1970’s one macobiotic teacher — Mr. Muramoto — who had a working background in TCM re-introduced these ideas into the modern macrobiotic lifestyle. While some macrobiotics tried to embrace these ideas, many others rebelled, and to this day it remains a controversy in the yin/yang paradigm — possibly strong enough to divide macrobiotics amongst themselves.

Macrobiotics and TCM are not the same. We can say that they are separate branches of the same tree, but each are unique upon themselves. Even practitioners of TCM are not fully convinced of the 5 Elements Theory. You can see for youself that most acupuncturists will favor a fixed diagram for needle insertion (usually cross referenced) over the designated two hours of organ activity and their respective needling times. In addition, the more traditional macrobiotics will favor finger manipulation (Shiatsu) over needles and look for non-technical applications over generalized body regions as opposed to specific points. Dietary adjustments are more of a priotity to macrobiotics, and without taking food into consideration acupuncture is seem only as symptomatic and temporary. Yet, there are numerous benefits when used together —

From my own point of view I feel that certain modifications of both systems (TCM & Macrobiotics) are needed in order to merge them into one effective system — and for the most part the central problem has to do with fixed correlative systems that have to do more with the world of magic than with natural science. In the back room of major macrobiotic communities there appears to be the growing need for rectification of macrobiotics as the new millenia approaches. I think this will take some time for it gets put on the table for discussion, but thanks to your inquirey and to the forthcoming messages perhaps this is the beginning of that long needed, and, hopefully, open dialog. For starters, here are two questions regarding the 5 Elements Theory:

1) How come some of the yang organs in this system are called yin by macrobiotic standards, and some of the yin organs are called yang by TCM practitioners?

2) We know that if you collect white light (ie sunlight) and pass it through a clear, solid prism it refracts into 6 distinct colors (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet) but in the 5 Element Theory blue, orange, and violet are missing?

Many things need to be discussed. We await friendly replies from our macrobiotic “teachers”. I hope this helps. In peace, Roy

Original article taken from:
http://www.yinyangstation.com/roy/index.cgi?read=46